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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

10 Mistakes People Make with Emergencies (plus 1 bonus)

1. Live in a perpetual "emergency" (remember the boy who cried wolf?).
2. Forget that emergencies mostly arrive unannounced.
3. Become a "gawker" (must see with their own eyes what is happening).
4. Don't prepare for them (which will lesson their affect).
5. Must insert themselves within / into emergency situations (the focus becomes them and not helping the hurting / recovery).
6. Misappropriate funds set aside for emergencies (as it has to do with relief organizations, it's when they have a high overhead and/or falsely solicit funds for one disaster while using them for another).
7. Forget that remaining calm is the best approach to handling an emergency (it helps calm everyone around you when you are calm).
8. Take the place of God (you can't do / fix / help with / be responsible for everything, but you can do / fix / help with / be responsible for something).
9. Get in the way of emergency personnel.
10. Overlook they can avoid emergencies just by taking care of themselves (e.g. eat healthy food and you will reduce the chance of a heart attack).

BONUS Conjure up emergencies that are not emergencies (e.g. the media does it to drive traffic to their websites and gain more ad revenue).

(Francis Barlow's illustration of The Boy Who Cried Wolf Fable picture above in the public domain: click here.)